


Raglan Road

by Savageandwise



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Grieving, John is dead, M/M, McLennon, New York 1980, Not for the faint of heart, OOC, Unfaithfulness, Weird Pairing, Work of fiction, not my take on reality, not reality, please don't read it, very very very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-24 18:00:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14360688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: After John's death Paul goes to see the only person who can understand his loss.Please don't read this if you're offended by the pairing. I have no energy to justify myself it's  ooc





	Raglan Road

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unusual pairing. If you find Paul/Yoko unpleasant or unrealistic or offensive then don't read. 
> 
> This fic is from Paul's point of view. His view of Yoko is his own and not necessarily mine. I only have respect for Paul and Yoko. This fic is a character study and a study of grief and not my personal head canon.
> 
> John is dead in this fic but there is no description of his death in it. Just the reaction of the characters to his loss.
> 
> If you're fine with all that I hope you enjoy! Leave comments! I'm dying to know what people think!
> 
> I wrote this fic for @Bewaremylove who said she would certainly read this pairing.

'On Raglan Road on an autumn day,  
I met her first and knew  
That her dark hair would weave a snare  
That I may one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked  
Along the enchanted way  
And I said let grief be a falling leaf  
At the dawning of the day.'

-Patrick Kavanagh

She took down her hair and he knew they were going to fuck. They'd fucked before, in London before she even met John, before he met Linda. He couldn't recall what she'd been like in bed, only that she'd been different. Her smell: smoke and incense. Her touch: shy but commanding. She was a puzzle he didn't want to solve. He just wanted to marvel at the pieces. He'd thought, absurdly, she'd be right up John's alley. And the rest, as they say, is history.

* * *

There was so much to get through and Paul was running on empty. He'd spent the whole week taking phone calls in his hotel with Linda sitting at his feet waiting to see if he was ready to talk about it. He wasn't. There was nothing to say. Someone shot his friend. Someone shot his best friend. Some jerk shot his lover. The English language didn't have the right words to have this conversation. 

In the end he went to see her. He went to her, to that monstrous building because she was the only one who spoke the same language. She was the only one who saw John the way he did. The only one who knew what he had lost.

When Yoko talked business she transformed. Her voice was still high, clear as a girl's. She stumbled a little over pronunciation but each word was written in stone. He read her father came from a long line of warrior scholars. He could see that in her. The pride. That clarity of thought. The cut-throat ability to peel away the bullshit and reveal the flaw in the deal. Even now when she should be shattered. Even now when her world was in pieces. 

“You want to take a break?” she asked him at last. 

It was then that he realised he'd gone quiet for ages. He didn't even know how long. She stood. It always shocked him how small she was. Her presence was larger than life when she chose to shine. When she didn't, when she retreated into the shadows, she was invisible.

Paul shook his head.

“I'm fine,” he said.

“John could be like that, too. Not know how to ask for things. Damned English manners. I'll make you some tea.” 

The last word was final. He could hear the edge like the blade of a katana. He followed her to the kitchen and stood to one side awkwardly. He turned, stared at the table. There was a stack of newspapers on it and a yellow legal pad covered with John's familiar scrawl. Like he'd just popped off to the loo and would be back any second. He sat down at the kitchen table, ran his hands over the yellow paper. She saw him do it but said nothing. 

“I've forgotten how you take it,” she said. 

Paul stared at her switching on the kettle, rinsing out the teapot, pulling out mugs. He'd forgotten she'd ever known. All at once his chest ached at the thought they'd known each other so long. They fought in the wars together. Sometimes together, sometimes on opposite sides. And now this. 

“Milk if you have it. Two sugars.”

“Sweet tooth,” she said with a smile. It lit up her face, making her glow. “Like John.”

He looked away when she said that. Ashamed. He caught himself enjoying her company and it felt as though he’d betrayed John. After all the animosity, all the times he cursed her name. She’d kept him from John. She did it on purpose. He gave her a faint smile and nodded. He could never forgive her. Never. Except that the grief took up so much space in him, there was no room left for the anger.

“Paul,” Yoko said, yanking him out of his muddled thoughts and handing him a mug of tea. “It's alright, you know. It's a difficult time.”

He took the mug from her, sipped gingerly. She sounded so rational, so put-together. He reminded himself she wasn't always like this. He'd seen her down and out. He’d seen her thin and wasted, strung out, hair unwashed, smelling of sex and cigarettes, dressed in grimey white, those smudged canvas trainers, John's arm around her. His John. His lover. Oh, his love. Anger spread through him like a forest fire. She was staring at him, her expression one of recognition. He wondered all at once if she could read his thoughts.

“There you are,” she whispered. “I missed you.”

“What?” he laughed nervously, setting down his tea before he choked on it. 

“The Paul I knew. The fighter. I saw him for a moment. The Paul he loved.”

He stood, the chair scraping the tile of the kitchen floor.

“No,” he said, anger twisting in his gut. “You don't get to tell me that now. You have no right.”

“Sit down,” she said. Her sweet, sweet voice, fine as powdery cherry blossoms, cracked like a whip. 

He sat abruptly, his tailbone aching with the sudden, hard impact. 

“How can you say that? I mean. How dare you?” he forced the words out. They sounded weak, sniveling, a foolish teenage girl fighting over the class heartthrob.

“I thought that's what you wanted to hear.”

It was what he wanted. But when it came from her it felt like charity. It felt like scraps, bone and gristle. It felt like she was giving him clothes she'd outgrown, worn at the seams, faded. Here, you have this, I was just about to throw it out. Take this second-hand memory, I had him flesh and blood.

He looked down at his mug of tea, struggled to compose himself. He had already lost John. Not just the once. So many times. Every time he did it felt like cutting away a part of himself. Everyone kept pouring salt in the wound and telling him it was for his own good.

“Does Linda know? I always wanted to ask,” she said conversationally.

He sighed. “I think so.”

It was easier to answer her than to fight about it. Besides, it felt good to speak plainly about John. Only a handful of people were ever going to acknowledge the extent of the loss Paul had suffered. And only Yoko knew the whole truth. 

“I thought you would have told her the real story by now.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. Linda knew the real story. But there was more than one story. He held multiple worlds inside him, they threatened to collide at times, threatened to explode and Paul had to keep them separate in order to survive. In one world he and John were star-crossed lovers, in another he loved his wife, treasured his family. In yet another music was the glue holding him together, there was no room for human love. He tried to explain it to Yoko now.

“Such a Gemini,” she laughed. “You didn't keep it from her to protect her. You did it to protect yourself. You wanted it all.”

“That's not true.”

“It is. You were greedy. And John wouldn't have that. He had to have everything. You don't want truth. The truth is too much for you to take,” she said.

Paul couldn't breathe. He needed her to stop talking, needed her to stop looking at him. She could see right through him with those hooded eyes, so dark they were almost black. 

“The truth is you made me into a villainess. I made it so easy for you. Here comes that witch. With her postcards and her dance festivals in the mind. Her funny Japanese name.”

“No.”

“I didn't take him from you, Paul. You used me. Both of you. I didn't end the Beatles. I galvanised you,” she said.

He lifted his hands up to his ears to block her out like a child might.

“You should listen for once. Neither of you had the courage to love each other properly. I was just the knife he used to cut his binds. I was just the vehicle. You both set me in motion.”

“He's dead!” Paul said. It came out mangled, half shouted. “Why are you saying this now?”

There were tears in her eyes, she blinked them away. 

“Someone has to say it, Paul. One time. Someone has to.”

He couldn't stop shaking, his face was wet. 

“Alright then. One time. I couldn't love him properly but you could? Tell me he was happy. Tell me you made him happy, at least.”

He knew she couldn't. Tears were spilling down her cheeks and she made no attempt to wipe them away. She shrugged awkwardly. 

“I tried,” she said softly.

She sounded so young. She twisted the edge of the legal pad, shredding the yellow paper. Paul wanted to rescue it from her, it was John's, he'd written on it and now he was gone. 

“You couldn't either,” she added, there was no venom in her words.

She picked up a paper serviette and blew her nose with it. Then she took her hair down. She did it absentmindedly, likely just to keep it out of her face but her hand slipped and it all came tumbling over her shoulders. All that black. And in that moment, he knew they were going to fuck. His stomach dipped down low, disgust and desire in equal amounts. He looked up and saw her staring at him. Her eyes were wide, pupils pinpricks, she was frightened.

“Paul,” she said softly.

Through the tears he could see her hand snake forward towards his. It stopped short of touching him. Paul shook his head. Not this. Not like this. She started to pull her hand back, colour staining her pale cheeks, lending her a strange beauty. Then all at once he was on his feet, his hand gripping her wrist, pulling her towards him. She fell forward displacing papers and mugs, discarded cutlery, a calculator and a bowl of withered fruit. They were inches apart now, he could smell her fear and arousal. She exhaled sharply in shock and he let go of her wrist, placed his hands to either side of her face. 

Her eyes flashed dangerously and for a split second he was sure she was going to spit in his face. He shook her once as if the action would snap them out of it. And then they were kissing, open-mouthed, starving. She put her hands over his, held them in place as if to keep him from bolting. As if he would. As if he could now. She tasted like salt and sadness and Gitanes. She tasted like John.

“Oh no,” she breathed against his mouth. “Oh, no, no, no.”

But that's not what she meant.

Paul let go of her, pushed his chair out of the way. Yoko let out a shrill animal sound of protest, her hands reaching for him and clawing air. He banged his hip against the corner of the table in his haste and pulled her into his arms. She was slight in his embrace, angular, her breasts soft against him. She felt like a contradiction. 

For a moment he thought they might leave it at that, a few desperate kisses and a tight embrace, something to remember with a mix of shame and pique. And then she reached down almost shyly and slid a hand over his cock. He was hard at once. A small smile quirked on her thin lips and she undid the top button of his trousers. It was like she could control time, one button seemed to take years. Another and then another and then she slid his trousers over his hips and time was a roller coaster. Everything was going faster and faster and he couldn't pause to catalogue every sensation. He couldn't tell if it was pleasure or pain. 

Paul pressed his mouth to hers again, ran his hands through her wealth of dark hair and down her narrow shoulders. He cupped her breasts in trembling hands through the fabric of her blouse. As a younger man, he recalled he'd been quite taken with her breasts. He wanted to see them now, take each nipple in his mouth in turn, tongue the areola. He unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off. She pulled down his underpants and watched his erection spring free, ran a finger along the stiff line of it. He removed her bra, his fingers struggling with the tiny hooks. He cupped them, bare now, marvelling at their weight, at the softness of her skin there. He put his mouth on her dark nipple at last, traced it with his tongue. She had her hand on his cock and as she stroked him, he thought: she did this for John. John spilled on that small hand. Paul needed to be inside her now, he needed to thrust into that tight space as John had. 

Her jeans were close-fitting, he had to work to take them off. Then he pushed her face-down onto the kitchen table and pressed himself against her. The table heaved with their combined weight and Yoko let out a soft gasp.

“I'm sorry,” he murmured into her hair as he grasped the corner of her silky knickers and slid them down.

“Don't be,” she said, reaching behind her to help him.

Pushing into her felt like tearing through membrane and arriving in a new world. The chill, the blinding light, everything overwhelmingly loud and tumultuous. Fists gripping her thick black hair Paul drove into her again and again. He wanted to lose himself in her. Erase all the pain and anger, the sound of John's voice that was etched upon his eardrum: I love you, don't you know? Paul, I love you. Not enough to stay. Not enough to leave her, the woman beneath him pushing her arse up to meet each thrust.

He’d never been able to say it back, though John had often tried to wheedle it out of him, plead it out of him, fuck it out of him. And at last, in India, threaten it out of him.

“She says she loves me. That's what she says.” 

John had showed him the postcard she'd sent. He hadn't seen any words of love, just a drawing of clouds. And a chicken-like scrawl: I am a cloud. Watch for me in the sky.

“John!” he'd said, “John, are you high? This is nonsense.”

“You're nonsense! You can't even say it, Paul! It's been years! You can’t even…”

“What? Say what? I'm a cloud? I'm a fucking cloud?”

“Fuck you.”

He pushed her down hard and thrust harder, his hips crashing into her, that sound of slapped flesh when they met. She was sobbing, pushing into him frantically.

“I'm hurting you,” Paul gasped, distraught but unable to stop himself.

“Yes. No, no, harder. Hurt me. Harder.” 

So he did.

She slipped a hand between her legs and as he moved in her she stroked herself. His pride prickled briefly and then she arched her back into him and started to moan. He could feel the edge of his release as hers drew nearer, close enough to taste, just a little more, a little deeper. One last thrust and he'd fall into her abyss, Alice down the rabbit hole. He stalled, pulling out, panicked, his heart going like mad.

“Give it to me,” she commanded, her voice raw with exertion and lust. 

She beat him to the finish, shudders of pleasure shaking her, she called out once in a language that was neither English nor Japanese. But Paul knew what she was saying, it was the language only they spoke, and John, but John was gone.

When he let go it felt like falling from a great height. He hit the ground and shattered into a million pieces. It was like dying or being born. He spilled inside her, weeping into her coarse black hair, with the thrill of release and a grief that could never be assuaged and a guilt that gnawed at his insides with needle-sharp teeth. He felt like he would never be empty. 

Paul pulled away and sat down on the floor, wrapping his arms around himself and rocking back and forth like a child. She knelt on the ground and put her arms around him, pressed his head to her full breasts. Paul understood at last how easily John had fallen under her spell, this woman who was both lover and mother. Not unlike his own Linda. 

“It's alright,” she whispered and stroked his hair.

But it never would be again. And this thing they had done, impossible, horrifying only weeks before now seemed the most natural thing in the world.

After awhile he managed to calm down and he traced the line of her pale shoulder with one finger.

“We did this once. In London. Do you remember?” she asked him.

“Not like this.”

“No.”

There was a distance between them again, the coolness that defined their relationship but their bodies still sought each other's warmth. They clung to each other, his hand on her breast, hers curled in his lap. He wondered if people would know now when they stood together in public. 

“I thought you and I…” she stopped, not bothering to finish the sentence.

He laughed a little, remembering. Paul McCartney as he had been then and Yoko Ono, just as much of a mystery then as she was now. What a strange pair they would have made.

“But you gave me to him.”

“Believe me. That wasn't my intention.”

She was a spider, manipulating and weaving stories, wrapping her victim in all that silky gauze before biting off their head. He was another kind of spider. Together they would have swallowed the world entire.

“John was… I tried so hard to show him that I…” she said, her lips at his throat, kissing the thin skin there. He could feel her teeth through the kiss.

They would have spun webs around each other, wrapped chains about each other's ankles. They would have drowned in greed and lust for attention. They would have killed each other had they chosen one another then. She was meant for John. He was meant for Linda. Paul rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger until it was a hard nub.

“He didn't exactly make it easy, did he?” he asked conversationally.

When she shook her head her hair fell about her like a widow’s veil. 

“You should wash. You can't go back like this,” she said, standing and looking about the room for their discarded clothing.

He wasn't ready to think about going back to Linda. He put that in a box to think about later. The way he set everything aside that was unpleasant or stressful. He stuck it in the back of his mind for safe keeping. That was how he maintained his sunny disposition, most of the time.

“Where's Sean? I didn't even ask,” he said instead.

“At the neighbours. A sleepover. There's no one here, Paul.”

He eyed her speculatively. Had she planned this? Did she know this would happen? The idea was stomach-turning. Even she couldn't be so callous. He stood and took his trousers and shoes from her. He leaned down to kiss her lips distractedly, the way a new lover might. Her lips parted beneath his for a moment and then she pulled away reluctantly.

“Come on,” she said, looking away in embarrassment. “Bath.”

She took him to the bedroom. It smelled of John in here, the scent made Paul's head spin. On the bed was a dressing gown, lace and silk. Robe, John said the last time they spoke on the phone. He'd laughed at how American he'd become.

“Let me take those,” she said, pulling his clothing out of his arms. 

She put his shoes at the foot of the bed, his clothes in a pile on the bedside table. It was such an everyday action, something a wife might do. He couldn't move for a moment staring at her, naked, her hair covering her soft breasts.

“Towels in the cupboard under the sink,” she said. 

“Ta.”

He turned on the tap and looked around. There was John's soap, a used towel on a rack near the tub. On a dish by the sink was his razor. Paul picked it up, raised it to his nose to sniff it. It smelled like his shaving cream. There was a book next to the toilet. She hadn't moved a thing. Everything preserved in amber like he was only away for the weekend and would be back on the next train coming into Grand Central. He wondered if she kept it like this when he left with May too. 

Paul sat on the edge of the bathtub looking down at the bathmat. John had stood here. His elegant feet, his knobbly knees, those loose hips. The cock Paul had taken in his mouth too many times to count, nose nestled against the coarse hair that grew there. His bellybutton, smooth chest. That long neck, stubborn jaw. The famous nose, narrow eyes. John.

“Paul,” Yoko called from the bedroom. “Everything alright?” 

He shut off the taps and walked back into the room decisively. She was wearing the dressing gown, her hair was pulled back. He walked right up to her and leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth. She fell to her knees and he followed suit, pushing the gown from her shoulders and kissing her sharp collarbone, the well between her breasts. He pressed her down into the carpet and kissed her again and again as she lay there letting him do it. It was strangely sweet. They ran in each other's veins now, like a narcotic and every time he touched her skin with his lips he could feel her desire, heavy and sticky, exuding from her like musk. 

He parted her legs, slid a hand between them to feel the slickness there, their combined juices. He rubbed her with his thumb till she lifted herself off the floor to find his lips blindly. He kissed her lips and then kissed her cunt, open, like some overripe fruit. Paul could taste himself on her, bitter and strange, not unlike John’s come when he’d swallowed it down. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, though she knew full well what he was doing. 

He looked up, her eyes were wide, pupils blown out. He didn't know how to explain why he needed to do this. Why he needed to lose himself in desire. That all the drugs and alcohol in the world could never be enough.

“Why?” 

She lifted her hips despite the question, her hands tangled in his hair. He wanted to render her incoherent with ecstasy. Wanted her defenceless, at his mercy. His pride demanded it. And beyond that he wanted to give her something, wanted to be the one to give her pleasure; the thought was surprising, terrifying. She squirmed in anticipation, her hands so tight in his hair it hurt. Only then did he snake his tongue through her folds and flick it at that pearl of pleasure nestled among them. She loosened her grip on him at once, her hands soft, sliding down his neck. He sucked the lips of her cunt one by one to the sound of her sighs. Then curling up again, circled her clit until she moaned out loud. She took hold of his shoulders, tried to pull him up on top of her. At her action, his cock twitched, he was hard again, already wet and desperate to sheath himself inside her. He wouldn't though, not yet. Paul gripped her hips firmly and increased his attentions, now sucking and licking, grazing her wet cunt with his teeth. She gasped for breath, her moans hoarse, her body convulsing like a possessed woman. She spoke in tongues.

“Paul,” she said. “Oh, oh Paul.”

He pulled himself up on top of her, sucked her nipples one by one as he finished her off with his fingers. As she caught her breath he looked at her. That wide mouth, the startlingly black brows, her eyes, dark and intense. Paul wasn't sure he'd ever seen her before. The line of her nose, that look on her face like she was memorising him like a poem. He'd seen her look like that before, at John.

She didn't look away from him, she just reached down between them and guided him into her. They moved together, a slow adagio on the floor of the room she'd shared with his lover. It felt different now, some of the urgency had gone out of it and each stroke sent ripples of pleasure through him, higher and deeper and more. Her kiss was different, too. Before, she'd kissed him like she meant to blot him out of the world, like she was cursing him each time her mouth was on his. There was gentleness in it now. 

He thought of John, those first few times, how they'd fucked like starving men, gorging themselves, swallowing without chewing. He recalled the fever in John's eyes. How one touch had him trembling from head to foot. Like he was jonesing for a fix. They'd learned to be tender eventually, how to make love. He wished he'd told John the thing he never said out loud. He wished he'd given him the one thing he wanted. He could only hope now, that John knew anyway.

He pressed his face into Yoko’s neck. They were slick with sweat now, their motions delirious, their limbs heavy. She held him close, her legs wrapped high around his waist. Her lips were at his ear, he could hear the whisper of her breath as he came, like an incantation. They stayed that way long after their breathing slowed and the sweat cooled, till he grew soft again and his seed trickled out of her.

His knees hurt. He imagined that she must hurt too despite the cushioning carpet. Later, bruises would blossom on her pale flesh like night-blooming flowers. He thought she must have fallen asleep but she shifted beneath him, cleared her throat.

“John loved you,” she said for the second time that night. 

Paul pulled away but said nothing.

“That's what you came here for, isn't it? John loved you, Paul.” 

He nodded and then looked away. He couldn't speak. He held her words against his chest like a frightened animal, then he stood and walked back into the bathroom. He sat in the bath for ages holding the soap and staring straight ahead. John loved him and he came here and fucked his wife- his widow. John loved him and he would never be able to tell him what he always meant to say one day: I love you. I love you, too. My soul. My darling. I love you, John.

Yoko came into the bathroom after a while, she wore the dressing gown again. She knelt by the side of the tub and washed his hair with strong-fingered hands. The desire had melted away at last. He felt liberated and that too felt like loss. Shampoo and tears coursed down his face.

“When you go back to her, Paul,” Yoko said as she scrubbed. “You don't say a word. This was between you and me. You won't do her a favour admitting it.”

She rinsed the suds from his hair, rinsed his regret down the drain.

“You'll just be alleviating your guilt.”

He wondered if she'd told John the same thing about Cynthia.

“What happened here is apart from the rest of the world. Do you understand?”

Paul nodded once.

“Of course you do. You and I, Paul, we speak another language. One no one else can know." 

John. He was their shared language. He was their lexicon. Their language was John.

He took a cab back to the hotel and let himself into the room he shared with Linda. She was dozing in the loveseat. When she saw him she stood and walked straight to him to wrap her arms around him.

“You came back,” she sang into his ear.

Linda knew, oh Linda knew the whole story. Start to finish. She knew and she wanted him anyway.

“I came back,” Paul agreed. “I love you. I love you. I came back to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the fic is from a poem by Patrick Kavanagh that was turned into a song by The Dubliners. [ Listen here ](https://youtu.be/8xvkvFviIj8)
> 
> The fic sort of started out as a bit of a joke. We were listing weird pairings and i named this one. Before i knew what had happened to me I was writing it for @bewaremylove who was lovely and enthusiastic and demanded more angst and even more- my favourite flavour 
> 
> Thank you to @bewaremylove and @where-it-will-go for being the best ever cheerleaders and encouraging me to write this monster of a fic, which sprang, full grown from my brain like Athena.
> 
> Special thanks to @where-it-will-go for finding me fics with um... reference material. I'll never look at Jon Snow the same way again.
> 
> Also thank you to @goddessdel your fic Services Rendered is a goldmine of smutty situations.
> 
> thanks to 11. For the diagrams. And Jane for sending them. Awesome.
> 
> Thank you so much to Twinka for reading and editing and liking it. You always encourage me even if i pick the weirdest subject matter. Thanks for the quick and clever beta.


End file.
